2 Boot Drives on one PC

[nsharma]

Is it possible to have a pc with two separate boot drives so i can run it as two PC's. I mainly use it for gaming but my sister has joined an architectural firm and wants to use it for work her laptop isn't the best so i thought if there is a way to have two separate operating systems running on two drives she can run her stuff on one and i can game on the other without interfering with the others stuff. I saw virtual machines or using a guest account but i would rather have a separate drive for her work stuff. 

[NPSTR107]

Setting up another user on the same computer would be by far the quickest option, and you could achieve something pretty similar without it being too complicated. Each user will have their own environment, desktop, documents, and other folders which won't overlap if you don't want them too.

[nsharma]

11 minutes ago, NPSTR107 said:

Setting up another user on the same computer would be by far the quickest option, and you could achieve something pretty similar without it being too complicated. Each user will have their own environment, desktop, documents, and other folders which won't overlap if you don't want them too.

so can i set up the user account in a way that it would use a separate drive, even if i format the drive it wouldn't affect my OS drive and other drives. 

[NPSTR107]

3 minutes ago, nsharma said:

so can i set up the user account in a way that it would use a separate drive, even if i format the drive it wouldn't affect my OS drive and other drives. 

You can set their user folders to save their documents, media etc on to the secondary drive but their profile information would still be on the main "C" drive and installed applications are shared. For example, an application like Steam would still show up for the other user, but it would be signed out and in it's own environment.

Depends on how private and separate you want it to be.

 

I don't think you can have a PC with two separate installations of Windows easily switchable without changing the boot order in the BIOS each time.

[nsharma]

2 minutes ago, NPSTR107 said:

You can set their user folders to save their documents, media etc on to the secondary drive but their profile information would still be on the main "C" drive and installed applications are shared. For example, an application like Steam would still show up for the other user, but it would be signed out and in it's own environment.

Depends on how private and separate you want it to be.

 

I don't think you can have a PC with two separate installations of Windows easily switchable without changing the boot order in the BIOS each time.

i think i would prefer two drives as sometimes i just do a fresh install of windows if any hardware or software has errors or issues that would be a problem with having the same os and two accounts

[NPSTR107]

8 minutes ago, nsharma said:

i think i would prefer two drives as sometimes i just do a fresh install of windows if any hardware or software has errors or issues that would be a problem with having the same os and two accounts

It's probably still easiest to just keep a backup of the Users folder so whenever you reset Windows you can just copy back the Users files.

 

As you can't really do two boot drives in the same computer without hassle, as far as I know.

[nsharma]

1 minute ago, NPSTR107 said:

It's probably still easiest to just keep a backup of the Users folder so whenever you reset Windows you can just copy back the Users files.

 

As you can't really do two boot drives in the same computer without hassle, as far as I know.

is it more complicated than selecting which drive to boot off from the boot menu as you said earlier??? For example i install windows on two drives and at every startup i go to the boot menu and select the drive  is it more complex than that

[NPSTR107]

4 minutes ago, nsharma said:

is it more complicated than selecting which drive to boot off from the boot menu as you said earlier??? For example i install windows on two drives and at every startup i go to the boot menu and select the drive  is it more complex than that

Yeah, as long as your sister knows how to switch the boot order then I don't think there's anything stopping you from doing it that way

[nsharma]

1 minute ago, NPSTR107 said:

Yeah, as long as your sister knows how to switch the boot order then I don't think there's anything stopping you from doing it that way

works for me. ill try it out. Thank you for your help